A transition is taking place between analog television and digital television and digital television is becoming available on a vast array of digital devices. As digital devices continue to become more mobile, power conservation in the devices becomes an increasingly important consideration. Depending upon the underlying transfer mechanisms, however, certain data transfers may result in increased power consumption for the device. For example, in a universal serial bus (USB) implementation, isochronous data transfers may be utilized to transmit the digital television data. Isochronous data transfers, however, may result in stored data that contains empty spaces, resulting in inefficiencies and increased power consumption when the data is processed. Consequently, there exists a substantial need for techniques to improve the power consumption for isochronous data transfers.